pynchon-l-digest V2 #2170

[Doug Millison]

Quail:
>Partly, perhaps -- but that was hardly the main reason.

Yeah, that's why I said "in part."  A very large number of factors and
variables come to play in the evolution of international affairs.  Is the
current war primarily motivated by corporations that stand to profit?
Probably not primarily, but certainly the possibility for profits will
motivate these corporations to support policies that let them sell goods
and services to governments on all sides of the conflict; Pynchon lays out
the dynamics pretty clearly in GR,  it's art, it's fiction, but it's
grounded in fact, too. Is the current war motivated primarily by a macho
need for revenge?  Maybe not primarily, but this kind of thinking has been
widely attributed to Bush in the amazing array of press coverage -- in
Time, major tv networks, etc -- explaining his thought processes, which did
in large part reflect the knee-jerk,
they-hurt-us-we'll-bomb-them-back-to-the-Stone-Age response that has been a
staple of U.S. foreign policy for generations, it's reflected just about
everywhere you look in the culture, too -- movies, comics, novels including
Pynchon's, etc. . Is this war happening in part because the U.S. helped to
create a highly trained terrorist army then turned its back and continued
to piss in their back yard -- certainly, but that's not the only reason.
And so on. Complex situation, indeed.

Quail:
>I think you have the tendency to look only to the most base, worst,
>corrupt aspects of the US political system sometimes, and draw the
>conclusion that these things are sole motivations, and everything
>else is hypocrisy.

The U.S. has a sorry, bloody history in foreign affairs going back a long
time; that's good to remember in an environment when our government
spokespeople and their apologists see U.S. actions through rose-colored
lenses when they're not lying outright; Pynchon alludes to quite a bit of
it in his novels, too.  I don't expect I need to repeat all of the
positives of U.S. foreign policy, assuming that people know what they are.
I'm all for a balanced view that takes into account both positives and
negatives.  You would go too far the other direction, I guess, seeing the
way you tried to ridicule that John Pilger article I passed along the other
day -- the only problem is, that negative history of U.S. foreign affairs
that Pilger offered is factually true, and  many students of history would
agree with Pilger's interpretation of those facts, seeing  the U.S., in the
current war, engaged in what amounts to  an extension of imperialism,
albeit modified in the current postcolonial situation.

Quail:
" We are interested in (1) disabling and
>retarding terrorist networks,

Selectively, of course.  The US continues to turn a blind eye to terrorist
elements of governments the US supports.  The paramilitary right wing
terrorists in Colombia, for example; there are more that could be mentioned.

>(2) increasing our capitalist coffers,

You seem to agree after all that profit is a motivating factor for this
war. Not the only factor, but an important one (one of  four you mention).

>(3) increasing our oil reserves,

Yes, I've mentioned this as a motivating factor.  No oil -- i.e., no
commercial benefit for the U.S. -- and, as you say, the U.S. wouldn't care
about what happens over there, wouldn't care what kind of ideology or
government dominates, wouldn't care about the human rights situation (hence
the U.S. letting the Rwanda genocide proceed, in a recent example).  I
agree with you on this point. It makes a mockery, of course, of Bush's
rhetoric about freedom and democracy and all the rest that we're supposed
to be fighting for -- as it did in the Gulf war when the U.S. fought to
protect seriously repressive regimes in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.  And
here's another parallel with Vietnam -- the U.S. claimed to be fighting for
freedom and democracy, yet kept in place a murderous, corrupt regime that
proved unable to win and keep the confidence of the people it sought to
govern.

 >and (4) promoting our modern,
>democratic capitalist way of life. None of these directly involves
>colonization, annexation, and so on.

Coca Colonization is what some folks called it back in the 60s.



Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com